Cavedweller

by Dorothy Allison

  “You think anyone will come?” Steph fretted.

  “I think a few will come just because Delia’s so scandalous,” M.T. said. “And a few will never come no matter if Delia suddenly had a halo light up over her spotless soul.” She dipped a potato stick in ketchup and popped it in her mouth. “Hell, if she hadn’t run off to become rich and famous, Delia would own the Bonnet by now.”

  “She is good with hair,” Steph agreed.

  M.T. chewed happily. “We just have to remind everyone of that before Nadine Reitower can remind them what a sinner Delia is.”

  “It would help if Delia made up with Clint.” Steph picked at her shrimp. They were pitiful, but Goober’s made the best fried potatoes in the state. “I asked around, and it looks like old man Byrd is right. Way I hear it, that man might die.”

  “One thing at a time,” M.T. said. “One thing at a time. How we gonna get these fool women into the Bonnet?” She bit into another potato. “What you think? Should we run some contest? Or offer makeovers to the home economics teachers?”

  “Naaa.” Steph swirled ketchup all over her shrimp. “Junior discount maybe. But all we got to do is get the girls to talking about how their mothers won’t go to Delia. Make her sound really dangerous and scandalous, and they’ll come to us. We’ll get the mothers when they see what she does for their girls. And we’ll keep our rates lower than Beckman’s.”

  M.T. laughed. “Stephanie, you are one smart woman,” she said, and ordered another plate of fried potatoes.

  Chapter 6

  Reverend Hillman drove out to the old Windsor farm three times in one month to talk to Louise about letting her granddaughters see their mother. He had known from the first it would not be an easy task; Louise Windsor was not easy about anything. It was a family characteristic. Old man Windsor had refused to go to church more than twice a year, the week before Christmas and the week before Easter—on the holidays themselves he kept at home—but Louise had been a reliable face in the pew three rows from the front. Always at her side were those two stern-faced little girls, in cheap matching cotton outfits obviously chosen by the grandmother. The older girl, Amanda, was a regular at vacation Bible school and weekly prayer meetings. The younger, Dede, came to Holiness Redeemer only because her grandmother dragged her, and never looked up at him when he tried to speak to her. She was the one whose image chided him, reminding him so painfully of Delia’s mother that he was grateful for the days she wasn’t there.

  “It’s a shock to see her,” his wife declared one time, surprising him by saying exactly what he had been thinking. “She’s just the image of Deirdre Byrd, isn’t she?”

  “Children are like that,” he had replied. “Every now and then one will come out the dead-on copy of some relative or other. It’s like God is making another run at getting the model right.”

  Mrs. Hillman sniffed. “Well, that’s a family needs remaking. Didn’t none of them live long enough to do much more than make a few babies and go on.”

  Only once in ten years had Reverend Hillman met the girls’ father, and that was the week they buried the old man. Clint had given the reverend a brief inclination of his stiff neck and turned away before the service began. He had watched the burial from off to one side, hands on his hips, eyes fixed on the casket. At no point did he look at his daughters, though they looked at him often. The hunger Reverend Hillman saw in those two girlish faces pushed him to preach more adamantly about the importance of love and forgiveness. Afterward several people told him how inspired his words had been, but neither Clint nor Louise Windsor said a thing. All Clint did was give another abrupt nod and hand over an envelope that contained exactly thirty-five one-dollar bills.

  The reverend’s wife had shaken her head. “That was a fifty-dollar burial if I ever heard one,” she said, “but the Windsors wouldn’t know the difference. Bet that boy would have planted his daddy in his peanut field if he could and saved the cost of the coffin as well.”

  On his third trip out to the Windsor place, as he pulled up to the farmhouse, Reverend Hillman recalled his wife’s words with a heavy heart. He had reproved her for her tone but had been unable to deny that she was right. Clint Windsor would probably have loved the notion of plowing over his daddy’s bones every spring, and Louise would have come out to watch with glee. What would it be like, he wondered, to see that old woman smile? In all his years at Redeemer he had never witnessed it. But what, after all, had she to smile about? Her husband was a brutal drunk, and from all accounts the son had turned out just the same. Reverend Hillman wiped sweat from his brow and remembered how many times the woman had come to church with bruises on her neck or puffy eyes. He had never been able to get her to admit that anything was wrong. What made the kind of woman who would take that as her due? he asked himself for the thousandth time. And what kind of women was she making out of those two youngsters in her care?

  “You’re getting to be a regular visitor,” Louise said when he came up on the porch. Behind her he could see Amanda, with her hair in a kerchief and an apron tied tightly around her hips. “But this is my boiling day and I haven’t any time to sit and argue with you.”

  “Boiling day?” He sniffed the steamy, bleach-scented draft off the porch.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know. Your wife’s young for it, but some of us were taught a woman changes over her sheets and sheers when winter passes. February fifteenth, my mama always told me. By then you’re supposed to have boiled your whites and be ready to think about spring. Some years I do it a little earlier, some a bit later.” She looked into the house once and rubbed her lower back. “This year I got buds on my forsythia real early, so I’m pushing it a bit. It’s been such a damp, ugly winter. Maybe I’m wanting to move on into spring earlier than usual.”

  Reverend Hillman smiled. “I think we all are,” he said.

  Louise shot him a suspicious glance. “You come around to nag at me some more?”

  “I’ve come for us to talk again. And yes, I do want to talk about the girls and their mother.”

  “Mother!” Louise’s mouth twisted. “I’ve been more a mother to these girls than she will ever be.” She shook her head. “You’re wasting your time, Reverend. Delia an’t no mother. She comes around here, she’ll just get the girls all upset. First little trouble comes along, she’ll take off again. Then what, huh? She goes away another few years and comes back, you gonna come speak for her all over again?”

  “She seems set on staying in Cayro,” Reverend Hillman said. “I don’t think she wants to do them any harm. And having them know she cares about them might do them some good.”

  Louise snorted. “Good! There’s no good in that woman.”

  “There’s good in all of us,” the reverend said carefully.

  “So you say, but I an’t no preacher. I’m a working woman raising two hardheaded abandoned girls growing fast into women themselves. And I don’t want her putting no notions in their heads. Got enough trouble now.” She looked back at the house again, clearly not wanting the girls to be part of this conversation. Reverend Hillman looked past her and saw that Amanda was gone, maybe back to the kitchen and the boiling pots.

  He cleared his throat and decided to try another tack. “Trouble,” he said, his eyes slowly sweeping the yard. “I know you don’t want no trouble. That’s what I was saying to Deacon Hayman when he told me he was worried what might come of all this. None of us want to see no family fighting in court, lawyers telling everyone what to do, the county welfare folks getting in on it.”

  “They wouldn’t have no say in what I do.” Louise’s face pinked at the thought of lawyers and county officials. “I’m raising these girls right.”

  “I would support you in that anytime, anywhere.” Reverend Hillman nodded firmly. “If you have to go to court, I would tell everyone how hard you have worked with Deirdre and Amanda.”

  “I wouldn’t have to go to court.” Now she was truly alarmed.

  “Well, I would hope not. But y
ou know how bureaucrats are. I remember when the child protective people gave you all that trouble before.”

  “That was’ cause of that hippie she took up with, him and his money, him and his lawyer,” Louise fumed.

  “Well, lawyers do make trouble.” Reverend Hillman watched her face.

  She thought for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was uncertain. “Delia got lawyers now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But she seemed very determined when she talked to me. And I had hoped we could make sure there would be no trouble. She said what she wanted was to see the girls.”

  “She an’t gonna take ’em,” Louise said quickly.

  “Well, how could she do that?” Reverend Hillman waited a beat while Louise grew more and more nervous. “Didn’t the court give you custody?”

  “They gave Clint custody. I’m not on the papers. I just been doing all the work.”

  “Well, Clint.” Reverend Hillman shrugged. “That wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”

  Louise looked him speculatively up and down. “You been talking to her a lot?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve just spoken to her the one time.”

  “Well.” Louise gazed off across the yard. “Maybe we could talk about her coming to see them once or twice. Long as that’s all we’re talking about.”

  The reverend inclined his head in agreement, keeping his eyes level with hers. “That’s all we’re talking about,” he said. “She just wants to see the girls.”

  Louise’s mouth twisted again, her lips drawing up into a grimace. As she showed Reverend Hillman into the house, he realized that she was afraid. Probably thought everyone was some kind of danger to her. And the problem was, of course, that she was partly right.

  Dede and Amanda took the news of their mother’s return with little visible response. To the reverend they simply said they would do what their grandmother wanted. What they said to her, he had no way of knowing. But they had grown up in that dusty yard, eating their grandma’s grits and stewed tomatoes, swallowing her sour resentments and seething distrust of anything she could not bleach or scrub or bury in lye. They wore her expressions and hid their thoughts so carefully that they might not have known what they wanted anyway. Their days were full of Grandma Windsor’s favorite Bible verses, Revelation and the whore of Babylon, not the parables but the fallen woman. Delia was the curse and the stink of their lives. Packages that came at holidays were refused or remained unopened. Cards were burned in the trash fire. Bitter jokes were told behind their backs or repeated purposely to teach them a lesson. The smell of homemade soap trailed behind them, and their classmates laughed at the clothes their grandma made them wear. The sisters breathed in rage like steam off soup. Their mother had not loved them enough. What did they care if she came around now?

  Delia decided she would be ready to reopen the Bonnet by Valentine’s Day. She and Steph and M.T., with Cissy’s grudging help, put up banners across the window and signs on every pole downtown. M.T. took flyers to church, and Steph went over to Beckman’s and put some up in the women’s lounge. M.T. had not been paid for cutting and styling hair since the twins were born, but she hoped to do as well as Steph. Steph hadn’t worked for a living since leaving high school.

  “My family and friends will come to me,” M.T. kept saying. Delia agreed with a smile, though she was still unsure anyone at all would come to any of them. It was a small town, and Beckman’s with its two chairs was not that far away.

  The first few days the three women kept the Bonnet’s windows full of fresh flowers and the chairs full of friends getting free introductory haircuts and treatments. Early on the opening Saturday, before the customers came in, Delia served coffee and corn muffins with slabs of bacon.

  “You must have got up early to make these,” M.T. teased.

  “Yeah,” Delia admitted. “Couldn’t sleep anyway. They’re a little heavy. Don’t have the knack for making muffins, never did.”

  “You should have gone over to Biscuit World.” Stephanie spoke around a mouthful of muffin. “Old man Reitower has the knack. Makes the best biscuits you ever tasted, specially the sausage biscuits. Makes you appreciate coffee all over again.”

  “Good there’s something worthwhile in that family.” M.T. sipped creamy coffee and smoothed her skirt, which stopped well short of her dimpled knees. No matter how wide her ass became, her legs were smooth and shapely. She had stopped at Biscuit World on the way over and noticed both the owner and his son looking at her legs when she left. And what would Nadine Reitower think about that, that skinny full-of-herself old biddy?

  “We get this place going good, I’ll start paying for biscuits,” Delia said. “Right now I can barely afford cornmeal.”

  “Thought you was supposed to be rich,” Stephanie said to Delia, waggling her muffin in the air and scattering crumbs on her skirt. “Thought everyone in the music business was rich. Wearing them clothes, riding them buses.” She grinned and pointed a finger at Delia. “Doing them drugs.”

  “Oh yeah, drugs.” Delia shook her head. “Lots of drugs. Marlboros and Camels, Southern Comfort and Jim Beam, straight-up whiskey in a warm glass.”

  “Sounded like it sometimes,” Steph said. “Way you got so hoarse on some of them songs, sounded like you were sipping something.”

  “I was doing more than sipping.” Delia’s tone was harsh. “I was drunk almost all the time I was in California.” She passed the muffins around again and saw that Cissy was listening. “No sense lying. It was awful, but mostly I wasn’t conscious for it.”

  “All of it couldn’t have been awful.” M.T. was uncomfortable. She turned her chair so she didn’t have to look at Cissy or Stephanie. “Some of it must have been good.”

  “Yeah, that Randall sure was pretty that time I saw him. One handsome man.” Stephanie blushed slightly. “And famous don’t hurt a man. Rich and famous. He made a lot of money on those albums.”

  “Oh, Randall was never rich. He just looked rich. Diamonds and Dirt was the only album Mud Dog did that made any money.” Delia blew on her coffee and seemed to forget for a moment where she was. “What Randall had was presence. He looked like a star, behaved like a star. He made people think he was the real thing.” Randall had charmed record company men so thoroughly that he even got them to front the cash for the star lifestyle. Reporters and photographers following everywhere, fancy hotel rooms trashed, glazed eyes, everything done for effect. All those bills handed over to nervous accountants. All those drugs laid out on redwood burl coffee tables polished to mirror intensity. The star life, the star presence. No cash to hand, but lots of perks.

  “There just was never any money,” Delia said.

  Stephanie raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “No money?”

  “Not a dime.” Delia leaned back in her chair. “I didn’t even have a phone for the longest time. Couldn’t make a call if I wasn’t in somebody’s office or hanging at Randall’s.”

  M.T. and Stephanie just stared at her. It was unimaginable, what Delia was telling them. A life lived in luxury but without funds. How did it work?

  “Crazy how rich you can behave when you an’t got a dime in your pocket. You learned to charge things to the company or borrow against your name.” Old clothes had to be sent out to be cleaned by hotel staff, new clothes bought on credit.

  “Underwear was the hardest.” Delia pushed her hair back. “I could get a fancy dress for a show charged to some fancy store on Wilshire, but I couldn’t get panties, bras, or socks. If it couldn’t be charged to some record company account, it couldn’t be had.” In seven years she never had in hand more than four hundred dollars. Delia told them it was like living in the twilight zone. If she stepped away from everything, it evaporated in her hand.

  “Can I get a salary?” Delia had asked Randall when Mud Dog/ Mud Dog was in production.

  “A salary? Girl, you gonna be rich!”

  “Yeah, well I’d like something I could count on.”
<
br />   “You can count on me.”

  “Randall.”

  “Girl, girl.”

  As a conciliatory gesture, Randall got Columbia to issue Delia monthly payments of a thousand dollars. “That’s not much,” Rosemary had complained on Delia’s behalf. She was getting a percentage for writing some of the music, though everyone knew Delia was working with her.

  “Delia don’t need money. Everything is paid for. She don’t got rent or grocery bills or car payments. She can charge anything to the band. Anything she wants I get for her,” Randall snarled out the side of his mouth. “Delia’s my woman! She don’t need nothing. Shit. Shit damn.”

  The joke was, Delia told M.T. and Stephanie, that Randall was always “borrowing” cash from her. More to the point, when she left, she had only the car in her name and six thousand in her bank account.

  “Six thousand for what? Eight or nine years?” Stephanie was pensive. “Me and Lyle are doing better than that.”

  “Well, I just never thought about the money,” Delia said. “I trusted Randall. Even when I should have known better, I trusted the man. Maybe it was the drinking, but the truth is, Randall had himself a piece of magic. He didn’t know how to use it, and he never cared enough to really work it. But if he turned those big dark eyes on you, you just naturally leaned into him. Couldn’t imagine he was mortal and silly like the rest of us. Thought he was something special just because he could sing sweet enough to break your heart.”

  “Ought to rename this the Rock Star Shop.” Stephanie was looking out the window, watching people walk by and look back at her. It was time to open.

  The words startled them all. Until Steph spoke, Delia’s nervous chatter had obscured the fact that she was doing what she had sworn to herself she would not do—talking about the years with Randall.

  Cissy was right there listening all the time, rocking her shoulders against the arch and watching her mother from behind her dark glasses and thinking about her daddy. Delia had no right to talk about him in that casual, scornful way. Stephanie had no right to suggest trading on his fame.